Kop van een ezel, naar links 1818

Jean Bernard drew this head of a donkey facing left, with graphite, sometime between the late 18th and early 19th century, when the Netherlands was undergoing major social and political upheaval. The image seems simple but the image of a donkey in Dutch art carries social and political baggage. Throughout the early modern period, the animal was used as a symbol of the lower classes. Its appearance here invites us to consider the place of laboring people in Dutch society, which was then experiencing its own democratic revolution and moving toward a more representative form of government. We might ask what role images like this one played in shaping popular perceptions of the working class in the Netherlands at that time. We can learn more about Bernard's political views and the social function of animal imagery by consulting historical archives and collections of prints and drawings. This will help us understand the ways the image and the social structures of its time may have been related.